School Bullying Council

Laura Booker Wants Charges Dropped

SANFORD, Fla. — A Central Florida mother who was arrested and nearly shocked with a Taser after confronting her daughter’s bus driver about bullies plans to fight the charges against her.

Sanford police arrested Laura Booker last Thursday and charged her with trespassing and resisting an officer without violence. Booker has now hired well-known Orlando-area attorney Mark Nation and accuses the school of ignoring her concerns that led up to the confrontation and she accuses the police officers of being too aggressive.

Booker said Sanford Middle School officials ignored her concerns about bullies for months. She said the bus driver not only ignored the bullying but also picked on her daughter. After not getting help from administrators, Booker decided to ask the bus driver what was happening.

“I really didn’t know where to turn because we ran out of options,” said Booker. “I approached him respectfully.”

Instead, the bus driver is heard raising his voice and telling Booker to “get off his bus.”

The driver, Roy Hooks, told his dispatcher Booker was “irate” and called for police assistance. When officers with Sanford police arrived, bus surveillance video shows them tackling and threatening to Taser Booker. Booker said police were too aggressive and said they overreacted. When they arrived, she thought they were on her side.

“If you watch the video, you’re going to see she was calm throughout,” said Nation. “This is going to happen again unless the schools, not just our schools here but schools everywhere, take seriously the problem of bullying.”

When asked about possible solutions to bullying on buses, the district said putting adult monitors on each bus would be too expensive.

After Local aired her story Monday, Booker said she received a call from the school, which apologize and said her concerns should have been addressed sooner.

“The Seminole County Public School system has developed a tolerance for ignorance, disrespect,” said Booker. “I’m not even angry. I’m frustrated and disappointed because I feel like the Seminole County Public School system failed me and my daughter.”

Watch Local 6 News for more on this story.

http://www.clickorlando.com/news/27539681/detail.html

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In a hearing focusing on anti-bullying legislation Friday at the Nevada Legislature, Dee Gregory’s testimony was chilling.

Gregory is the father of the Fallon High School wrestler who was stripped then urinated on by teammates during a December trip to Las Vegas. It was an incident that school coaches and administrators initially did not report to authorities.

The incident, which was reported by news media across the state, has left Gregory’s son broken and contemplating suicide. The incident shows that the state’s anti-bullying laws need to be strengthened, Gregory said.

“What happened to my son has made it impossible for him to go back to school,” Gregory told the Senate Education Committee. “Since Feb. 11, for 49 days my son has been hospitalized, and it is unclear when he will return to society or if we ever will.

“He wants to die and I work hard every day to keep him alive,” Gregory said. “To him, death is the ultimate protection. To him, death is his safe zone. To him, death means freedom from pain. To be dead ensures him that no one will ever hurt him again or violate him. Unless the law is changed, there is not hope.”

Two bills, SB 275 and SB 276, were designed after the Dec. 3 incident involving Gregory’s son to beef up current anti-bullying laws in Nevada.

SB 275, sponsored by Sen. Shelia Leslie, D-Reno, would make bullying a crime, a misdemeanor for the first offense but a felony for the third offense. It also provides civil liability for school districts that fail to comply with anti-bullying laws.

SB 276, sponsored by Sen. David Parks, D-Las Vegas, would set up a bullying prevention fund for the state’s general fund and force each Nevada school district to have an anti-bullying coordinator and every Nevada school to have an anti-bullying specialist and school safety team.

“The current law has made a mockery of my son and other victims,” Gregory said. “(These bills) will not stop bullying and hazing completely, but it will decrease the number of victims because the aggressors will know that there are consequences for their actions. This criminal behavior needs to stop.”

http://www.rgj.com/article/20110401/NEWS11/110401046/Bullying-Nevada-dad-says-son-wants-die-?odyssey=nav%7Chead

(CNN) — The family and friends of Jon Carmichael will speak out Thursday about his suicide and the effects of bullying.

His parents say it was bullying that led the 13-year-old to commit suicide, hanging himself in a barn near his home in Cleburne, Texas.

The family is scheduled to speak at a news conference, that comes four days after the first anniversary of Carmichael’s death.

On that anniversary, his parents, Jon Timothy and Tami Carmichael, filed a $20 million federal lawsuit against several officials at the school Jon attended, alleging they deliberately turned a blind eye to the bullying of their son, prompting his death.

In the lawsuit, documents state that staff and students at The Joshua Independent School District observed several explicit acts of bullying, including Jon being thrown into a trash can “easily a few times a week,” but did nothing to stop it.

“He was placed upside down in a toilet bowl, and had his head flushed several times, at each occasion. These acts were observed by other students who failed to report the incident,” the documents said. “Just prior to his death he was stripped nude, tied up and again placed into a trashcan.”

The lawsuit states that event was taped and put on YouTube, but was taken down “at the direction of an unknown staff member, who also failed to report the incident.”

Carmichael family attorney Martin J. Cirkiel said the family’s goal in issuing the lawsuit is to educate.

“On the human level, the family wants what every family wants when they come to me in these kind of cases. They want to make sure it doesn’t happen to someone else,” the attorney said.

Cirkiel said the family would like to see a program developed in their son’s name and to be able to open a trust fund for kids who need it who are being bullied.

“They want to increase planning and education,” he said.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/03/31/texas.bullying/